Good lord, we have another one: Adobe is starting rapid release cycle for Flash

Trying to mimic Chrome, last year Mozilla introduced a rapid release cycle for Firefox — Mozilla decided they would release a new major version of Firefox every six weeks or so. This resulted in Firefox, which used to see roughly one major release every year, going from Firefox 4 to Firefox 9 in about six months. Needless to say there was significant backlash, even among Mozilla’s own — a Firefox developer publicly admitted that everyone hates rapid releases. Apparently Adobe did not learn a lesson from Mozilla’s blunder because Adobe has decided to start rapid releases for Flash.

According to an official blog post by Adobe, Flash Player is being moved to a rapid release cycle starting with Flash 11.5; Adobe will now deliver beta versions of Flash to the people who are in Flash’s beta channel quicker than before which, in return, should result in faster releases for Flash to the general public. While Adobe has committed itself to rapid releases, it has not announced an official schedule as to when to expect new versions of Flash (e.g. Mozilla says new versions of Firefox will be released every six weeks; Adobe has no such timetable).

Despite my condescending tone, rapid releases of Flash may not be that bad. They might actually be a good thing. You see there are two major reasons rapid releases for Firefox have ticked everybody off while no one has a problem with rapid Chrome releases:

Version numbers. Firefox has always been known as “Firefox X” — “Firefox 2”, “Firefox 3”, “Firefox 4”, etc. Heck, it was part of Mozilla’s early strategy to market the release of “Firefox X”, namely Firefox 2 and Firefox 3. Since people are used to seeing Firefox X, it is annoying the heck out of end users to see a new Firefox X coming out every few weeks. Chrome, on the other hand, has always been known as just Chrome. Google has never emphasized Chrome version numbers; I can’t even tell you which Chrome I’m on without looking it up. Because Chrome is just Chrome, and not Chrome X, no one really cares how quickly Chrome versions are released.

Silent, seamless updates. For the longest time Firefox’s autoupdater could not do silent updates. That is to say, Firefox required user input to update to newer versions. People don’t like being prompted by Firefox to update to a newer version every other month. Even today Mozilla has not perfected silent updates for Firefox, despite introducing the feature earlier this year — I still saw the Firefox update dialog when I upgraded to Firefox 15. Chrome, on the other hand, simply updates in the background. Most of the time users don’t even know Chrome updated to a newer version.

Flash doesn’t have the same issues as Firefox. Flash has never been known by its version number by the vast majority of people; Flash has always just been Flash or Flash Player, like Chrome has always been Chrome. So most people likely won’t care which Flash version is being pushed to them every few weeks (or however quickly Adobe releases the updates). Also, Flash introduced an automatic updater back in March that is supposedly able to silently and seamlessly update Flash to the latest version without user input or acknowledgment. I say “supposedly” because I don’t utilize this automatic updater on my computer so I cannot personally attest to how well it works. In other words, I don’t know if it is Firefox-like silent updates or Chrome-like silent updates but, from what I have read, Flash’s automatic updater looks Chrome-like. With true silent updates, most users likely won’t even know how quickly Flash is being updated and thus won’t care.

The other positive side of fast Flash updates is better security and stability. If done probably, faster updates to Flash should lead to a more stable and more secure Flash due to improvements being quickly integrated and pushed to the end user. However, if done incorrectly, rapid Flash releases could lead to a more unstable and insecure Flash.

Only time will tell how effective Adobe’s execution of rapid releases is and how the public will react. However, I don’t expect a Firefox-like backlash… assuming Adobe doesn’t fail like Mozilla.

Related Posts

Subscribe to dotTech to never miss an article again!

About Ashraf

Happily married to the most beautiful woman ever, Ashraf is the founder of dotTech. Ashraf spends insane hours on dotTech (usually writing articles but sometimes doing absolutely nothing except staring). Yes he is weird, but he is also very friendly.

Rapids releases will always result in major security issues. Better that software companies work on a product for a substantial amount of time then release when there are valid reasons for a new version.

Companies, like Adobe, release new versions to spur sales, seldom with any significant change in user experience, value or functionality. Example: Acrobat. It continues to bloat when version 6 is more than adequate for most non-corporate users.

The more code included, the more holes will be found. It is obvious Java and Flash have little or no quality control or the numerous flaws within would have been seen. These and other software companies should be held accountable–it is foreseeable that sensitive personal data will be on every users’ computer. Loss due to security lapse should be a viable cause of action. Boil plate disclaimers have little impetus.

Jyo

Java needs to do this seeing as how they constantly need to release patches for their security holes. Then again, updating Java is a real pain in the…

Zapped Sparky

Updating more frequently is always a good idea. I just hope they at least triple the number of people testing them, and more thoroughly, before releasing them onto the public. Anyone else have the 11.3 experience? :)

mukhi

i also like frequent updates as it mostly deals with security. there will always be cons.

Peter

After installing an Addon named Skip Compability Check I am glad to get frequent updates for firefox. True, every update can bring regression bugs but most of the time this is not the case. As long as I can use the menu as I’m used to, I consider the updates being a good thing. Same holds IMHO for any other free software (except GNOME for Linux which becomes really crippled as time goes by).